The present invention generally relates to the field of paper shredders, and specifically to paper shredders that have a mechanism for removing staples and paper clips prior to shredding.
Paper shredders are commonly used to shred documents in order to preserve the confidentiality of the information on the documents. Shredders come in a variety of sizes, from large industrial shredders capable of shredding stacks of sheets of paper at one time, to personal and office shredders that can shred up to several sheets at one time.
Personal and office shredders are commonly designed to have paper hand fed into the shredder. These shredders include a slot, typically on the top of the shredder, and sheets of paper are fed into the slot. While these shredders are often designed to accommodate staples and paper clips, it is desirable to remove staples and paper clips prior to shredding in order to prevent damage to or jamming of the shredder.
Some shredders are designed to accommodate a stack of paper for shredding. These shredders commonly pull sheets of paper from the bottom of a stack for shredding several sheets at a time. When shredding a stack of paper, staples or paper clips can be embedded in the stack, and thus it is impractical to remove all staples and paper clip prior to shredding. While these shredders can often accommodate staples and paper clips, it would be desirable to have a system for removing staples and paper clips from sheets of paper within a stack prior to shredding.